Ignition Sequence: Inside NASA's Plan to Return to the Moon and Explore the Universe

NASA is about to do something it has not done in over 50 years: send a crew back to the moon. But Artemis II is just one piece of a much bigger picture. In the same week NASA gave us an inside look at what life aboard the Orion spacecraft will be like, agency leaders took the stage at a major summit to outline a vision that stretches from low Earth orbit to the outer reaches of our solar system. Taken together, these two conversations paint a portrait of an agency in motion, firing on multiple fronts and moving with urgency.

Video: NASA

Ten Days in the Orion Capsule

The Artemis II mission is the first crewed flight of the Orion spacecraft since the Apollo program ended, and the crew of four will spend roughly ten days putting the vehicle through its paces. Susan Baggerman, Chief Health and Performance Officer for the Orion program, described the focus clearly: the mission is about checking out systems to confirm the team is ready and well-positioned for continued human exploration.

The mission profile is carefully staged. After launching on the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, the crew performs what’s called an Apogee Raise Burn, placing them in high Earth orbit for 24 hours of critical system testing. The strategic value of that orbit is deliberate: if something goes wrong, the crew can still return to Earth quickly. Once all systems check out, they commit to the translunar injection burn and set course for the moon.

What gets tested in those first 24 hours? Pretty much everything. Oxygen levels, CO2 scrubbing performance, the potable water dispenser, a food warmer, and the flight exercise wheel all get verified. The crew also conducts a rendezvous and proximity operations demonstration to check Orion’s handling qualities and simulate docking with another spacecraft.

Then there is the Universal Waste Management System, or UWMS, the spacecraft toilet. Melissa McKinley, project manager for the UWMS, explained the engineering challenge: going to the bathroom without gravity and without water means relying on precisely managed airflow to collect and contain waste. It might sound mundane, but it is genuinely complex, and confirming it works on day one is a real mission priority.

The crew also works through communications checks with the Deep Space Network, tests an emergency backup comm system, verifies that suits can be donned and pressure-checked quickly in an emergency, and sets up a makeshift radiation shelter using stowage as shielding against solar particle events.

After logging over 685,000 miles around the moon, the crew splashes down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego, where the U.S. Navy recovers the capsule and, most importantly, the crew.

Video: NASA

NASA’s Bigger Picture

While Artemis II captures the headlines, NASA leaders used the Ignition summit to address a wider range of challenges facing the agency. The mood was notably candid. Dana Weigel, program manager for the International Space Station, gave a transparent assessment of where things stand in low Earth orbit.

The ISS is an extraordinary achievement: 4,000 research experiments, 5,000 researchers from 110 countries, and over 290 people who have lived and worked aboard it. But its structural limits are real. By the mid-2030s, the station will no longer be viable, and NASA is grappling with how to ensure there is no gap in America’s presence in LEO.

The original plan was to fund two competing commercial space station providers to take over as the ISS retires. That plan has run into serious headwinds. Transportation costs are rising. The private market for space tourism has not grown the way projections assumed. With current budget levels, NASA cannot fund two replacement stations. Funding one is a challenge. Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya put it directly: the agency cannot continue to maintain the illusion that the current path will close.

NASA is now evaluating two paths forward. The first continues the original commercial transition but with a single provider. The second is a phased approach where NASA procures a core module that attaches to ISS, commercial providers add modules to it, and the combined system detaches as the station nears retirement. Both options face the same underlying challenge: a multibillion-dollar budget shortfall.

What NASA Is Launching Next

Despite the institutional headwinds in LEO, the science mission pipeline is full and impressive. Dr. Nicola Fox, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, opened her remarks with a striking figure: the number of confirmed exoplanets passed 6,000 last year. When you look at the night sky, more than half the stars you see likely have orbiting planets. The probability of life beyond Earth is no longer just a philosophical question.

The Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is currently under budget and ahead of schedule, something Dr. Fox said she will never tire of announcing. Roman will survey the sky 1,000 times faster than Hubble while maintaining comparable sensitivity and resolution, observing hundreds of millions of galaxies over the course of its mission. It is also a key milestone toward the Habitable Worlds Observatory, a future telescope concept designed to directly image Earth-like planets and search them for signs of life.

Europa Clipper is already on its way, traveling 1.8 billion miles to Jupiter’s moon Europa, where strong evidence points to a saltwater ocean beneath the icy crust. The mission will search for conditions that could support life.

Dragonfly, launching in 2028, will send a nuclear-powered rotorcraft lander to Saturn’s moon Titan, arriving in 2034. Titan has a dense atmosphere, lakes of liquid methane, and complex prebiotic chemistry. Dragonfly will hop between locations on the surface, covering more ground in less time than any Mars rover has ever managed.

On Mars, Perseverance delivered results last year that brought us closer than ever to finding evidence of ancient life. In 2028, NASA will also launch ESA’s Rosalind Franklin rover, which will drill up to two meters below the surface to sample material shielded from radiation, equipped with mass spectrometry instruments capable of the most advanced organic matter detection ever attempted on another planet.

Closer to home, NASA’s Earth science work touches daily life in ways most people never realize. About 75 percent of Fortune 100 companies use NASA Earth data. The upcoming INCUS mission will, for the first time, measure the real-time evolution of a convective storm, improving severe weather forecasts by up to six hours.

And on the lunar surface, the Firefly Blue Ghost CLIPS mission successfully landed and operated 10 experiments for NASA at a cost of less than one-third the inflation-adjusted price of a single 1960s surveyor mission. NASA has now selected Intuitive Machines for the next CLIPS contract, delivering seven payloads to the moon’s south polar region. The commercial lunar model is working.

The Thread That Connects It All

What emerges from both of these conversations is a consistent theme: this is preparation. Every system checked on Artemis II, every test of a toilet or a sleeping bag or a communications relay, is laying the foundation for the missions that follow. Every telescope launched, every rover rolled, every commercial agreement negotiated is part of a longer arc.

NASA is not just going to the moon. It is building the operational knowledge and scientific foundation for sustained human presence throughout the solar system. Artemis II is the ignition sequence. The rest is the mission.